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Friday, 3 May 2013

This is the first of a series by me and a number of guests about magical never-to-be-forgotten books. The
idea is to celebrate some wonderful older fantasy titles - with a wide definition of fantasy! Some will be familiar, others I hope will be unfamiliar (so we can go and search them out!) The series is called 'Magical Classics' and there are only two criteria: each title will be at least 50 years old and it will have meant much to the person who has chosen it. Here is my opening piece, and I hope you will forgive a little autobiography...

Simpson's Cat - by Bill Wild

When I was about sixteen, we moved to a small village in Yorkshire, to live in a wonderfully rambling house with
twenty rooms, three staircases and no electricity.In winter, frost coated the insides of
delicate windowpanes scrawled with the diamond-engraved names of previous
inhabitants. We couldn't afford to heat the house properly - indeed, apart from open fires, I don't suppose anyone had ever tried. Draughts whistled under the
doors, and the only warm place was the kitchen.

In summer, the doors and windows stood open to let cats in, and stray bees, and the sounds of sheep bleating and curlews calling.One day I brought my pony into the
stone-flagged living room.One night a
bat flew into my bedroom through the open window and whirled around and around
before finding its way out again.Outside
in the dark, I could hear the beck flowing quietly down the dale to join the
Aire, and owls shrieking in the trees.

I was at that happy age when one is almost independent, yet
with few responsibilities.I was writing
stories, about which I was blissfully uncritical.And I could spend nearly all the rest of my time
reading.One day I borrowed from Skipton
Public Library (yes, it’s still there) a drab, insignificant-looking little
black cloth-bound book called ‘The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ by Lord
Dunsany, published in 1950.

I can’t remember now whether this was the first book by Lord
Dunsany that I had read.I may have
already come across his full length fairytale ‘The King of Elfland’s Daughter’
(to which Neil Gaiman pays graceful tribute in ‘Stardust’).At any rate, ‘The Strange Journeys of Colonel
Polders’ turned out to be something quite different: difficult to categorise:
not your average fantasy at all.I read
it, adored it, borrowed and re-borrowed it, and then one day it
disappeared.I never saw it in the
library again. Perhaps it had been stolen by some less scrupulous fan.And it was only a few years ago, decades later, that I finally tracked
down another copy.(Thank you,
abebooks.com!)

It begins in that most Edwardian of settings, a gentleman’s
club.The eponymous hero, Colonel
Polders, objects to the election of a new member, Pundit Sinadryana, ‘on the
grounds that he was by several thousand miles outside the circle that was
intended by the original founders…’The
colonel is stiff, racist, conservative, and aggressively disbelieving of the
Pundit’s claim to possess the power of transmigration, to send a spirit
travelling ‘to other lives’.

“I should like to see you do it,”
said the colonel…

“I will show
you,” said Pundit Sinadryana.And after
what the colonel had just said it was difficult for him to decline the
invitation; much as he wished to do so, not from any fear of the adventure, but
because he did not like Pundit Sinadryana.

“When?”
said the colonel.

“Tonight,
if you like,” said the Pundit.

The experiment is tried.The Pundit burns various powders, and chants a spell ‘low and musical
right into the colonel’s face, of which we heard no clear word, nor did we wish
to… “Well”, said the colonel, “I don’t seem to be doing much travelling.”’

But the next moment he falls asleep.And shortly after that he’s snoring.And when, moments later, he wakes up: ‘he
stood up at once and walked out of the room without saying a word.’

By Janet's Foss - by Bill Wild

It’s left to the narrator and his friends, with the aid of
many a glass of Malmsey wine and many a cigar, to coax from Colonel Polders the
stories of the lives he has lived during the space of those few moments.The poor colonel has been a fish, a fox, a
dog, a moth, a pig, an eel, a tiger.He
has been a cat, a butterfly, a flea, a goose: a bat, an antelope and a mouse. At
the end of each life, the colonel has died in his animal form, only to be
reincarnated in the next.In each life
he has experienced sensory revelations, which of course are lost to him now
he has returned to his own body.And he
recounts his experiences with a mixture of rapture and resentment at ‘that
damned fellow Sinadryana’, that is both lyrical and extremely funny.As a pig, he explains:

“…I couldn’t see very well what
was going on, because of the high walls of the sty, but fortunately I had a
very wet nose.”

“A
very wet nose?” exclaimed Charlie Meakin.

“Yes,”
said the colonel.“One cannot smell
anything without a good wide area that is always damp… No, it is very ample
life that is led by a pig.”

As a fox, he lies in his earth waiting for evening, when he
can hunt:

“And it is a curious thing, and
you may possibly not believe me, but I waited without impatience.One can hardly imagine waiting two or three
hours for one’s dinner when one is hungry, without any impatience
whatever.But such was the case.

“I
lay there just enjoying the sound of the wind going by, and the quality of the
air that I breathed, and the rounded shape of the smoothed earth where I was
lying, which was so exactly suited to my needs…A fern grew at the edge of the earth, and whenever the wind blew, it
waved over across my view of the sky.I
watched it doing that while the sky’s colour changed slowly; and I felt no
impatience with time.”

And as a hummingbird hawk-moth, he beats against a window:

“The glory of that light…was
calling to me with music as well as beauty.I darted towards it, and there was no barrier, no window I mean: nothing
between me and that unearthly light glowing amongst melodies and irresistible
calls.”

“And
it was a candle?” asked Charlie Meakin.

“The Strange Journeys of Colonel Polders’ is a supremely
happy book that celebrates the marvellous diversity of life.Dunsany writes as though he knows himself
what it’s like to be an eel or a moth or a pig.I don’t suppose for a moment that a book like this could be published
today. It breaks all structural
rules. There is only the slightest of plots, with one little twist at the end
to round things off.The book is barely more than
a linked series of short pieces.But in
this case, for me, it doesn’t matter.It’s the journeys that count, along with the semi-comical insights of the
poor colonel, forever exiled from the abundant delights he has known.

For years and years, while the book was lost to me, I
remembered the image of the Colonel as a fox curled in his lair, watching ‘the
white light at the end of that long earth turn to a glowing blue…’

I read this story at a golden age, and for me it is a golden
book.

Moonlight in the Dale - by Bill Wild

All artwork by Bill Wild (1903-1983) whom I knew. He lived and worked for many years in Malhamdale. Copyright: St Michael the Archangel, Kirkby Malham.

I believe Lord Dunsany used the same idea in My Talks With Dean Spanley (although I don't know which came first).Your description reminds me somewhat of Arthur's education in The Sword In The Stone, too.

I think you're right - that one was written in the 1930's, I believe, and the Dean experiences life as a dog. There was a film based on it, recently, with Peter O'Toole. (I haven't seen it - can anyone recommend?)

I think this book is richer, though - and you are quite right, it does bring the Wart's transformations to mind. I love that too! And in John Masefield's The Box of Delights. young Kay is transformed into various animals by Herne the Hunter. Was it something in the air of the first half of the twentieth century? An escape, perhaps, from the wars of humanity into the innocence of animal lives?

I loved the film of Dean Spanley - it's very peculiar but funny and charming and in the end quite moving - especially if you like dogs (or Tokay)! I haven't read the original story though. The King of Elfland's Daughter is a favourite book of mine.

Thanks, Lily, I must see that film! And yes, we were so very lucky to live in that house. It had been empty for three years since the old lady, the last of the family who built and owned it, had died. It was full of bits and pieces, old furniture no one wanted, and one one room which had had a hole in the floor and was too dangerous to enter, was full of junk - a Victorian birdcage, old knife grinders and floor polishers, a Jacobean table with one leg rotted off... It's still the house of my dreams.

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Note on copyright

As I'm about to welcome a number of guest writers to this blog, I thought a brief note about copyright would be in order. All posts and guest posts on this blog remain the copyright of whoever is the author. Obviously brief quotes are always fine, but if you would like to quote extensively from or reproduce any post in full, please seek permission from the author in the usual fashion. Many thanks for your co-operation.